This invention relates in general to reactors and in particular to a new and useful reactor which includes a reactor jacket or housing having vertically spaced annular ducts thereon which are connected to a heat exchanger circulating line and which provide means for controlled circulation of a heat exchange medium to a central area of the reactor having a tube bundle.
The invention relates to a reactor for carrying out exothermic and endothermic catalytic reactions, having a contact tube bundle surrounded by a reactor jacket and with radial admission and discharge of a heat transfer medium via an annular duct for each by means of a pump in circulation over an external heat exchanger.
A similar reactor is known, for example, from German disclosure No. 1,601,162. The respective annular ducts permit conducting the heat transfer medium through a plurality of openings distributed over the circumference to the interior of the reactor and to discharge it therefrom. Yet, and despite the additional use of distributor plates for instance according to German disclosure No. 1,675,501, in particular in the case of very large reactors with correspondingly numerous tubes, and also when carrying out reactions with a very strong heat tone, certain difficulties result with respect to a uniform heat removal and supply, as the individual openings occur at very different distances from the point of supply and removal at the respective annular duct. To make the annular ducts correspondingly large would mean a high structural cost and would sometimes also present a problem of space. On the other hand, the use of small aperture cross-sections would unreasonably increase the energy requirement for circulating the heat transfer medium. Besides, electric drive motors of for instance 400 kW, as they enter into consideration for large reactors with strong heat tone, being slow-running, are available only in high-voltage design at correspondingly high cost and with a correspondingly high weight and space requirement.